According to When did I move to Andøy, Norway? and Why does my location in stackoverflow profile change?, there is now an effort to standardize on a canonical format for the location
field in a user's profile. Entries which don't match that canonical format will get autocorrected.
Unfortunately, that autocorrection seems to be pretty much random. In my case, it autocorrected Karlsruhe, Germany
to Delaware
, which isn't even on the same side of the planet, let alone the same continent. When I re-entered Karlsruhe, Germany
, it suggested Ka, Democratic Republic of Congo
as the correct format. (Thankfully, that is just a suggestion and can be overriden.) In other cases, it seems to correct locations which contain the number 6
to Dublin, Ireland
, randomly relocate people to Norway, or mangle the spelling.
Where is the documentation for what format is considered "correct" and what isn't, so I can make sure my entries don't get autocorrected? And shouldn't there be a link on the profile edit page to that format specification?
EDIT: Hmm … it appears that my memory is failing me and at least some of my profiles may have had DE
as a location and not Karlsruhe, Germany
. But it still doesn't make sense why that got corrected to Delaware
. DE
is the ISO 3166-1 ALPHA-2 code for Germany. The ISO 3166-2 code for Delaware is US-DE
. If ISO 3166 isn't considered canonical, then what is?